


Our Dark Garden

by dynamicsymmetry



Series: Pacify [8]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Dom/sub, F/M, Feelings, Knifeplay, Spanking, assorted other kink references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 20:48:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3354806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This Thing, it's not just about doing things anymore. It's bleeding into everything. A world of new possibilities is opening up. Daryl muses on it, on power, on what it means that he's using it on Beth in an entirely new way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Dark Garden

**Author's Note:**

> Another one with less smut and more thinking/feelings. I felt like it was important to address some stuff with Daryl at this juncture, especially his history of abuse and what it means in the context of sexual dominance. 
> 
> Because psychology is interesting, dontcha know.
> 
> Also many emotions.
> 
> Title stolen from BT's wonderfully atmospheric [song of the same name,](https://youtube.com/watch?v=wwcI9qSbUbE) which fits the mood of this absolutely perfectly and can be regarded as a soundtrack.

He didn't anticipate this at all.

Doing things with her, doing things _to_ her, that was easy to understand. Maybe when they started this he didn't have the most complex understanding of pleasure and how multifaceted it can be, how _complicated_ it can be, but once he started learning, once he started understanding that the range of ways in which he could make Beth feel good - feel _amazing_ \- was so much wider and broader than he had ever imagined, that was simple enough to grasp. Ultimately bodies are relatively easy. You do things to them and you get feelings out of it. Input and output. Maybe what you're doing is sort of complicated, but the thing in itself is not. 

But he's not sure what to do with this. 

It's about bodies, sure. It's _definitely_ about bodies. But it's slipping into things that don't have to do with bodies, not really. It's in his cock, absolutely, and his hands and his mouth, but it's also in his _skin,_ in the deep core of him that ties itself into knots when he looks at her, that sometimes almost makes him want to cry when he stays up after she's fallen asleep beside him and watches her. Not out of any lingering grief or pain - because even if she came back and it was all right, the grief and the pain were still real. It's more that what he feels is too intense for his body to contain. It's like it has to find some means of release. 

He didn't know it was possible to feel like this about someone. 

There are a lot of things he didn't know. 

A week after he presses her up against the wall and tells her to make herself come, they're sharing a bed and they don't go back. The place he shares with Rick. No one says anything much about it. No one expresses any disapproval, and he doesn't think anyone really feels any. They haven't talked to anyone about the details of what they're doing together, beyond making it clear that everything is fine and if anyone needs to be worrying about anything one or both of them will make it clear. 

It's hard to miss how happy she is. How happy both of them are. In the midst of what is still, frankly, a pretty terrible situation, they're glowingly happy. If watching her sleep makes him want to cry, thinking about this and how it's come to be nearly cracks him the fuck up. 

It's ridiculous. Could be that's part of why it's so wonderful. 

When they fuck it's not like that every time, not ropes or gags or blindfolds or knives, not him slapping her, not his hand on her throat. Sometimes it's just like it was at the beginning, soft and slow, and sometimes it's faster and harder, but now, somehow, that thread of it is always there. His power and hers, intermingled and intertwined, still a little clumsy and still a little tentative but ultimately harmonious. And smoother all the time.

It's becoming part of everything. 

Out on a run with Maggie and Glenn and Sasha, they don't make it back before dark and they're holed up in an abandoned house, just like old times. Not many walkers around, and as this shit goes it's relatively chill. They're together, wrapped up in a thin blanket with their watch shifts coming closer to morning, and before they sleep he cups a hand over her mouth and puts his other hand between her legs and works her with his fingers until she's crazy with it, until she's trying so hard to be quiet that he can tell she's biting at her lips and tongue, and he doesn't give her any say in it and he doesn't let her come. Leaves her twitching and frustrated and when she hisses it in his ear he digs his blunt fingernails into her hip and breathes _Watch your mouth, girl._ And she's instantly silent. Instantly pliant. Letting him curl an arm around her and stroke her hair until she falls asleep. 

And that's when the idea comes to him that it's possible for him to set rules. It's possible for him to set them, give them to her, and punish her if she disobeys him. 

It might be possible.

It's yet another thing that terrifies him, when he realizes it. But as soon as he thinks it, he knows it's probably inevitable that he'll at least bring it up. He'll at least attempt to do so. 

And not for the first time and not for anything _like_ the last he wonders where the fuck this came from. What the fuck he's doing. What it says about him that he wants it. 

Because this touches something deep inside him that frightens him a little, frightens him in a way that has nothing to do with the kind of excited terror he feels whenever he perceives something new they can try. It touches a part of him that's still raw and agonized, fear and a sense of total worthlessness that has never and - he suspects - might never leave him entirely, no matter how many people show him that he's loved and he deserves to be so. There was power in what was done to him, the exercise of it. What was done to him, it was about the violent, stupid sense of control that comes with a bestial need to terrorize someone. 

He can't do that with her. He just can't. He remembers the shack, remembers how it was, how he was with her, and he knows what he came close to. He knows where that poisonous, cancerous violence came from. He never wants to go there again. 

But the one time he - haltingly, painfully - tried to tell her this, what he was afraid might be lurking somewhere inside him, she touched him, ran her fingers through his hair, held him close and asked him if, when he slaps her, when he tells her to do things and is unbending about it, when he makes her whimper _please, Daryl, no,_ if there's any malice in it. Any genuine sadism. If he ever does these things because he really wants to hurt her. And he thinks about how he feels when he does them, about how he loves her so much it hurts _him_ and somehow these things only make him love her more, about how all she would have to do is whisper one single word and he would stop completely, and he _could_ stop if he had to, and he feels better. 

He feels stronger. 

So she pushes back against him. Once. Testing him, he can tell. He tells her he wants her to bring him something - utterly unimportant, and later he won't even remember clearly what it was - and she doesn't and he says nothing but files it away, and that night after everyone else is asleep he makes her ass and thighs so viciously, burningly red that by the end she's crying, huge shuddering sobs which break his heart more than a little but which also... 

He loves her for it. Because she doesn't say the word. Because when he touches her lips she nods - _remember_ \- and he knows it's not that she's afraid to say it and she's not just trying to please him out of some sense of obligation. 

Somehow, for some reason, he's giving her exactly what she wants. 

Maybe what she needs. 

So afterward he wraps her up in his arms and combs her damp, tangled hair back from her face, kisses her tears away, tells her he loves her, tells her over and over, tells her that she was so good for him, tells her everything's all right - tells her that from now on he expects her to do what he says. 

Tells her that if she doesn't, this is going to happen again. 

And when she falls asleep with her head tucked under his chin, he can feel her smiling. 

In the end - beneath all the complications and all the weirdness and all the questions he has about what this really means and where it came from and where they're going together - it's actually very simple for some very simple reasons. 

The first time he tells her to get the knife for him, give it to him on her knees. The first time he tells her to beg for his cock, to really make him believe she wants it badly enough to be worthy of it. The first time he - practically shaking because he's so fucking nervous about this and what he's actually going to think and feel when it happens - tells her to drop to the floor and kiss his feet. 

And he thinks _That escalated quickly._

He's dizzy with it. He's higher and higher until there's vertigo. This is the end of the fucking world, the actual goddamn apocalypse, death and horror outside walls that are, admittedly, worryingly frail, and here behind them they're building something together, something strange and wonderful, which is all their own. They're building a world inside the world, where they can be safe. Where they take the deepest parts of themselves and give them to each other, exchange them like gifts, hold them close. 

He knows this won't last. He knows that sooner or later the walls will come down and they'll have to run again, or there won't be any running at all. Or one of them will be on a run and just won't come back. Maybe she came back like a miracle but in this world at the end of itself, death comes in the most mundane forms. Bad luck. Stupid accidents. 

She's probably in a position to know that better than almost anyone. 

This won't last. This isn't some kind of epic love story that survives everything thrown at it. Something he could never face before all this: they're going to lose each other, and it's going to hurt so much, and maybe afterward there won't be anything left. 

But right now they have this. Whatever it is, wherever it came from, whatever it means. They have it and it's good, and he'll hold onto it like he holds onto her, treasure it the same way. 

This is teaching them both, he understands, to let go of fear and take whatever they can while it's there for the taking. To love each other with the full force of that fearlessness. 

Lying in bed with her, exhausted and buzzing, tears still streaking her face, his fingertips against her lips. Her smile. _Remember. Remember._

_Remember._


End file.
